getting existential about entropy
When you think of all the chaos out there in the universe, it makes sense that the level of disorder is constantly increasing. Black holes, exploding stars, and all the rest. It begs the question: why on this tiny speck of stardust we call Earth, is there so much order?
It may not seem like it at times, but there is a lot of order here on Earth. The very fact we have roads, dams, bridges, homes, offices, and hotels is quite remarkable. Take it a step further: the fact that organic lifeforms have evolved in all their beauty and symmetry is nothing short of a miracle. Simply being able to look at the order of hexagons in a honeycomb is a thing of beauty.
Why specifically there is so much order here on Earth is another deep question. Reading my last post will get you close, as I explored how physical life forms are intelligently created vessels for awareness. That's my opinion, anyway. Regardless, the order here on Earth follows the Second Law of Thermodynamics: the total entropy (disorder) of an isolated system always increases over time. Thanks Dr. Frankel, I knew that first year of a Chemical Engineering degree would come in handy at some point or another. Spoiler... I failed and had to change courses to Civil Engineering. Studying soil was even more boring. Who'd have thought it?
I digress. Entropy is always increasing in this chaotic universe, but we, somehow on this miraculous little planet called Earth, are locally reversing entropy. But sooner or later that local reversing of entropy will eventually grind to a halt. Entropy will start increasing as we get sucked into the chaos of the rest of the universe, and we will have to say goodbye to our relatively high degree of structural regularity. We'll either get swallowed by a black hole or engulfed by our precious Sun that has blessed us with energy and life for as long as we can remember. Or maybe something worse, who knows?
If you subscribe to the idea that there will eventually be a heat death of the universe, then you know that as the level of disorder increases over billions of years, eventually matter will be undifferentiated. Everything will be reacted, and all space and matter will be evenly distributed. Essentially, no matter where you are in the universe, you won't be able to tell because everything will be the same. There will be no more heat. There will be no more light. There will just be nothingness that will simultaneously be everythingness.
It kind of reminds me of the time one of my students asked me, "When you die, is it just like before you were born?" I always like having an answer for my students, but I didn't that time.
I'm saying this like it will happen for sure, but it is still a hypothesis, albeit one of the most widely accepted. What we can't deny is that this theory states we're heading to a state of oneness. This is a word people frequently use when they describe feeling connected to God, or the source of creation. We're all going to return to this source of creation because we're all made from stardust, and that is the state to which we will return.
So you have to ask yourself the question: does this make you feel scared or does it make you feel relieved? Is it a good thing to know that eventually, we will no longer have to suffer the pain of feeling like an isolated, separate entity in a world that feels like it's forgotten us?
I'm still trying to figure that out myself, but the idea of us all returning to oneness, or "walking each other home" as Ram Dass used to say, brings me some comfort. In the coming weeks, I'm going to attempt to use this as the basis for postulating how we might reframe our suffering.